About Foreseeable Future

Griffin Pinkow

Founder/CEO Foreseeable Future Foundation

Griffin Pinkow was a perfectly healthy child until the age of 11. It was at this time that his parents started to notice some visual issues that Griffin was experiencing. Griffin was always an athlete and if his dad threw him 100 pop flies, he would catch 99 of them. During a traveling baseball trip, Griffin was in the outfield, and he was no longer able to track the ball. This was Griffin’s first step toward trying to figure out what was occurring with his deteriorating eyesight.

Upon visiting a couple doctors who felt that prescription glasses would do the trick, Griffin quickly figured out that this was not the case. After realizing that this was not such a “quick fix”, Griffin and his parents went to doctors all over the country to try and find answers. This took them back to Griffin’s hometown of Princeton, New Jersey where he did some testing with his original ophthalmologist. His doctor advised that she saw pigment on the retina, and Griffin and his family quickly became concerned at not knowing what that meant for Griffin. A few months later, Griffin was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa. Retinitis Pigmentosa is a retinal degenerative disease that slowly takes your vision from peripheral to complete vision loss.

Being hit with a level of diagnosis such as that can be devastating. At that time, Griffin’s parents had to sit him down and let him know that he was going to slowly be losing his vision. Even at such a young age, Griffin did not let this stop him and he was determined to move forward as best he could. Griffin did not know how much vision he was going to lose and at what time, but he remained active and still played sports and even got into marathon running with a sighted guide and tandem cycling. As an active student athlete, Griffin still faced challenges on how to be incorporated in PE and how to make sure he was getting the right accommodations in the classroom. It was also very difficult for him to explain what he could and could not see to his sighted peers.

In college, Griffin’s vision deteriorated tremendously, and it was difficult for him to come to grips with his new reality. His college peers did not fully understand the severity of his vision challenges, and Griffin did not want to use a cane or have a guide dog at the time. He did not want to feel different in front of his sighted peers. Griffin felt that this was one more step toward being less independent, however he later came to realize that it was the total opposite. In Griffin’s junior year of college, he began using a cane and this made a positive difference in his college experience. He saw that there was a need to explain what he was going through at the time in order to make his sighted friends and college staff better understand what it was like going through a daily routine with limited vision.

By raising awareness and doing events on campus, this showed that there was a need to start something bigger. In Griffin’s senior year of college, he was sitting in a living room with friends and he came up with the idea that he wanted to start his own non-profit organization. In 2017, after graduation, Griffin met more people who also had visual challenges, and this pushed him even more to start The Foreseeable Future Foundation. The Foreseeable Future Foundation aims to help kids, adults, and veterans become more active, feel more comfortable around their peers, and feel a sense of accomplishment. Griffin always says that if he could tell his younger self anything, that it would be to embrace the visual impairment earlier as well as anything else that came with it. Griffin’s attitude has always been “why worry?” Instead, he always chooses to persevere through the challenges and make something better of them. Griffin aims to continue the growth of Foreseeable Future Foundation to help people in multiple aspects of their life all around the country.